When hanging the flag, please stop and think about public education, freedom, and what schools could be like. So much has been done to privatize schools that they may be a shell of their potential.
Corporate reformers have changed how America’s students are educated, and politicians from both parties have, for years, evaded, ignored, or facilitated how these severe losses will hurt not only students but the country and its future.
Crisis Creation
President Ronald Reagan began the anti-public education crisis with A Nation at Risk. Students in poor neighborhoods without tax support for good schools and the societal issue of race relations affected schools, but there was no crisis for most students. President Reagan benefitted from attending a public school in Illinois.
Policies were made to drive changes causing people to hate public schools and believe charter schools and vouchers would be better.
Parents and the community were led to believe their schools failed, to hand over ownership to outside organizations and relinquish public school ownership.
Policies and rhetoric by both political parties have caused the changes that make schools appear to be failing.
From No Child Left Behind to the Every Student Succeeds Act, including Common Core State Standards, American control of public schools has shifted to wealthy individuals and corporations who dictate how schools should run, setting up anti-public school nonprofits that promote a business agenda.
Throughout the years, the same people today who call public schools a crisis helped create the problems Americans face in their public schools.
The corporate media has helped push the crisis card. Still, repeated Gallup Polls show that parents like their public schools. They dislike other schools due to what they hear.
Higher than High Expectations
Continually creating hurdles for students where they will inevitably fail has been the Modis operandi for years.
Consider NCLB’s changes to kindergarten, once called the children’s garden, beginning over twenty years ago. Kindergartners never used to be expected to read by first grade, and the class itself was a half-day introduction to school that included unstructured play lending itself to creativity and imagination.
But schooling has pushed students harder. Many parents are convinced that higher expectations are imperative. Students must read by third grade, or they’ve failed and should be retained. This is not supported by research.
Another way to create student pressure is through Advanced Placement from the College Board. College-like classes in high school used to be limited. Now, AP classes are used in many high schools for ranking students.
The College Board makes a huge profit on public education, increasing high school expectations beyond past expectations and removing decision-making from the teacher.
Read Annie Abrams’s book, Shortchanged: How Advanced Placement Cheats Students, about how the College Board’s Advanced Placement program has been destructive to America’s high schools.
While students are expected to reach more difficult objectives, subjects focusing on creativity, including the liberal arts, are removed from the curriculum.
Teacher Hate
Well-prepared teachers are critical so students will be knowledgeable with good futures. For years, corporate reformers have pushed the notion that anyone can teach, that teachers need no special career instruction. Or that computers can teach better than humans. There’s no proof of this.
Beginning in 1998 Teach for America corps members were hired in poor schools especially charters with five weeks of training. Now a variety of similar programs place fast-track trained teachers into classrooms.
Corporations flooded this organization with donations (from 2014) while they cast doubt on professional teacher performance. By cheapening the teacher workforce, this ensures students will get less prepared teachers.
TFA corps members have been lifted to prominent positions in universities, state education departments, or as media critics but have yet to study teaching.
The State of Michigan just invested $30 million in Teach for America! Yet Michigan’s qualified teachers are 41st in the salaries teachers receive.
Also frustrated with the pandemic, Americans were led to turn against teachers who worked to keep students and families safe.
All this drives parents to reject public education and turn to vouchers for private and charter schools, often with little accountability.
Americans need and deserve great public schools open to all children. On this day, commit to investing in America’s public schools! Get involved in local public education and help teachers help the students who will lift America to new and better heights!
Other 4th of July posts:
Religion’s Destructive Effect on Public Education this July 4th 2022.
Independence Day and the Loss of America’s Democratic Public Schools 2021
Happy 4th! Celebrating America’s Teachers, NOT Chromebooks! 2020
Gates’s Blunders Destroy Teachers and Public Schools! 2018
Public Schools and Freedom: A New Threat as We Celebrate This 4th of July 2017
Freedom and America’s Public Schools and School Boards: They Belong to All of Us 2014
Public education has been destroyed by the democrat party and the teachers unions. Now a new breed of teachers think it’s a good idea to promote the liberal woke agenda. It’s also obvious that teachers want nothing to do with parents. It’s obvious why. You should be attacking the democrat party and your unions instead of people trying to get a normal education for their kids.
If you read the post carefully, I say:
Corporate reformers have changed how America’s students are educated, and politicians from both parties have, for years, evaded, ignored, or facilitated how these severe losses will hurt not only students but the country and its future.
I have always pointed to both parties when it comes to troubling reform.
And I’m often critical of the teachers’ unions, even though I believe good union representation is necessary for teachers and students and great schools parents can be proud of.
Also, most teachers work closely with parents to achieve gains for students. The best education involves parents, teachers, and students.
This division has also been intentional to privatize public schools.
A couple of thoughts… Good teaching requires a professional ethic that understands that pedagogy does not come automatically with intelligence. Teaching is a practice that requires preparation and more practice. Most of the general populous fails to understand this. Too many leaders in the private and public sector have little understanding of what takes place in the classroom. Second, it astounds me that as the failures of privatization become manifest, the purveyors of personal wealth double down on the propaganda with “Personalized Learning” (The ultimate oxymoron) and the “Science of Reading.” Meanwhile, there is very little investment to counter this misinformation. Progressive educators have got to find a way to fund a messages that puts this age of “educational deform” in its place.
Why anyone would think that corporate America had the best interests of students first and foremost.? Public schools have no other interest but the welfare of their students. They do not have to make money to justify their existence.
And Americans should question who’s getting those public school dollars now. Thanks.
Public schools have become nothing more than an instrument for wealth extraction. The negative press – “failing schools” – is just part of the long-term marketing campaign and it has been remarkably successful. It is important for the public to realize that there is a vast difference between successful instructional methods, curriculum design, educational resources, etc. and the financing schemes that intentionally create chaos and churn in order to baffle voters into accepting this theft of our public assets.
It is profoundly disappointing that with great fanfare, 3 Democratic governors – Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania – have allocated enormous funds to education but with the majority of the money going to private interests, like TFA and vouchers. The private equity vultures own everyone.
For those who still believe that public education is a pillar of democracy, there is nothing to celebrate today.
Excellently put! Thank you, Laurie. I couldn’t agree more.